Into The Maw
by All The Umbrellas In London
Summary: Set just before the end of How To Stop An Exploding Man, Sylar crawls towards the manhole, and either salvation or damnation...


"JUST SHOOT HIM!"

Audrey Hanson couldn't move. She just couldn't.

"WHAT ARE YOU _WAITING_ FOR?"

Audrey's hand tightened around the gun. The man in black standing before her didn't move, just stared at her. Still, she just couldn't pull the trigger.

"_SHOOT_ HIM! FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, JUST _SHOOT_ HIM!"

Audrey didn't move.

And, all of a sudden, it was too late. The screamer was dead; the man in black had ripped his head off, and there was blood across the ground. Her eyes widened, as the man in black waved his hand.

Audrey didn't know what happened next.

She flew through the air, and she screamed. The man in black disappeared, and Audrey landed in the square's wide, deep fountain. She plunged into the icy, inky blackness, knowing that once again she had failed.

Sylar had become even more powerful.

For a moment she wanted to stay under the water, and just lose herself in the freezing blackness. But, somehow, she pulled herself out of the water. She threw her arms over the side of the fountain, and hauled herself onto the cobblestone plaza, sopping wet, and covered in failure.

She dragged herself towards the body of the latest victim, knowing in her heart that Sylar had already done his grizzly work. This man was dead. Sylar had his power, and had become even stronger than he already was.

The dead man's eyes stared up into the night sky, glassy, lifeless.

"No…" Audrey whispered, and placed her hand over his eyes, and shut them. D.L. Hawkins was dead. "No!"

"Audrey?" came a silky voice, cooler than the water she had been submerged in.

Her heart stopped; she knew that voice.

"Is that you?" the voice demanded, and Audrey rolled to the left, her hand automatically going for her holster. However, the gun was gone; she must have lost it during her brief flight.

"Audrey?" the voice demanded, louder than before.

Audrey pulled herself to her feet, and ran for the fountain, but the voice followed her.

"_Audrey?_ Where are you going? _Audrey!_"

Then, she saw it, about halfway between Hawkins' body and the fountain. Her Browning. She scooped it up, and spun around, pointing the gun right at the source of the voice. This time, she pulled the trigger. Three times.

The woman, the speaker, wasn't even fazed by the bullets, and just stared at Audrey, clearly livid. "How _dare_ you? After all I've _done_ for you! After everything I _sacrificed_!"

"NO!" Audrey shouted.

This woman was dead. She was dead.

"YOU'RE _DEAD_! I _WATCHED_ YOU DIE!" Audrey screamed in desperation, squeezing the trigger again, and again, and again.

"How _dare_ you?" the woman cried.

"You're dead!" Then it dawned on her. "This isn't real. Wilmer's power… Sylar, you bastard!"

In an instant, the woman disappeared, and Audrey spun towards D.L.'s body, her mind racing. The man in black was kneeling over Hawkins, busy doing _something_, something Audrey didn't even want to think about.

She whipped her gun up, and pulled the trigger, praying that maybe he was distracted enough.

Nothing came forth but a hollow click.

_She was out_.

"No!" she whispered once again.

Sylar heard it. He wheeled about, covered in blood. He raised his left hand, and Audrey was once again flying through the air. She hit a wall, _hard_, and was winded, but she didn't fall. Sylar was holding her up.

"You could never let it go, could you Audrey?" Sylar asked, stepping over D.L.'s body. "You could have walked away. I didn't want to kill you…"

He brought his right hand up, stretched out his long, thin index finger.

There was a whir, like a buzz saw, and Audrey felt more pain than she ever had before.

"I showed you your mother… why couldn't you just have been happy with that?"

Audrey could see nothing through the blinding agony, and could barely hear above her own screams of pain.

"Why did you have to keep coming?"

Audrey managed to grunt out a few words, barely audible, but she knew Sylar would hear. "Because you killed five million people…"

"No I didn't."

Sylar flicked his hand, and Audrey shot upwards into the night sky, screaming all the while. Sylar turned away, and looked back down at D.L.'s body.

Audrey did not come back down.

Wherever she was, Sylar knew she was dead.

Sylar spun back to D.L.'s body. He leant down beside the dead black man, and placed his hand on the man's chest, concentrating. His hand slid through D.L.'s corpse, as though it was composed not of muscle and bone and organs, but of thin air.

Sylar smirked. "Perfect."

Next stop: the White House.


End file.
